Appeal panel shut down after Balding killer's action

The Innocence Panel, set up to help wrongly-convicted prisoners prove their innocence through DNA, has been shut down because it is unfair to victims and unworkable for applicants.

The Police Minister, John Watkins, said yesterday an application for forensic help from one high-profile jailed killer had highlighted a lack of protection for crime victims' families in the panel's process.

Stephen Wayne "Shorty" Jamieson was 23 when he was jailed for life on his own confession and witness testimony over his part in the 1988 rape and murder of Janine Balding, 20, near Minchinbury. Two youths aged 14 and 16 at the time of the murder were also convicted.

Having lost applications to the Court of Criminal Appeal, the High Court, and finally the Supreme Court for a hearing to set a minimum sentence, Jamieson now wants to search for DNA evidence to prove his innocence.

Jamieson had applied to the panel through his solicitor, the upper house MP Peter Breen, for a DNA screening of a scarf used to gag Balding, which was found at her murder scene.

Mr Breen said the scarf could help prove the "Shorty" involved in Balding's murder was Mark "Shorty" Wells, not Jamieson - a claim Jamieson has made unsuccessfully in previous court proceedings.

Analysis did not find Wells's or Jamieson's DNA on the scarf, but Mr Breen said he believed Jamieson was innocent and said the panel process was flawed, in part because it used outdated DNA analysis techniques.

He said the Government had a vested interest in the case because Jamieson is testing in the High Court the legitimacy of legislation framed to keep him and nine other notorious killers behind bars permanently.

But it is understood some panel members believe Jamieson's application was vexatious.

Panel members are also concerned they are constrained by privacy issues from properly considering an application, and have no control over how information they publish to applicants is used.

The panel has no power to overturn convictions, but for those prisoners who had suffered obvious injustice, there was no direct process to fix it.

Mr Watkins said the panel's chairman, the former Supreme Court judge Mervyn Finlay, had raised the panel's concerns with him.

Mr Watkins said: "I'm suspending the operations of the Innocence Panel because I don't believe there are sufficient checks and balances to protect the victims of crime from further anguish. The Innocence Panel process, as it is, leaves too many questions unanswered. It should be more transparent for applicants, victims and their families."

Mr Finlay would review first whether there was a need for an Innocence Panel, then its membership, structure and functions.

He has terms of reference to consider what type of person can apply, including the nature of their offences, the custodial status, what DNA evidence was presented at trial and whether all other avenues for testing had been exhausted.

Of importance to cases like Jamieson's will be what information should be disclosed, and to whom it should be passed.